Re: Why polyglot is needed

"Henry S. Thompson" <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>, 2013-03-19 21:15 +0000:

> Michael[tm] Smith writes:
> 
> > Sure, but then that <a> element is no longer serving any actual purpose in
> > your document at all. So it's not a very compelling example of a real use
> > case in need of polyglot markup.
> 
> The void element issue comes up all over the place.  I just checked a
> small subset of the XHTML I have lying around, and 37 out of 100 had 
>  <p></p>
> 35 out of a (different) 100 had
>  <p/>

Not a problem in practice, because HTML parsers simply treat <p/> exactly
the same as a <p> start tag -- and the </p> end tag is optional, anyway.

> I also found 56 instances of XHTML files with one or more of
>  <title></title>
>  <a></a>
>  <td></td>
>  <strong></strong>
> alongside 25 instances of XHTML files with either or both of
>  <td/>

That's a similar case to to the <p/> case: HTML parsers treat <td/> exactly
the same as a <td> start tag. And the </td> end tag is optional.

>  <title/>

That's a clear document-conformance error.

> so this is not a corner case.

What exactly is not a corner case?

Regardless, I don't think any of the specific evidence you've put forward
so far in this thread argues compelling about the need for polyglot markup.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike

Received on Tuesday, 19 March 2013 21:32:25 UTC